Can English be such one excellent reasoning for why Asian students are successful in the industry of internationalized education?

Internationalization, a frequently used trend in the industries of globalized village though it cannot be claimed as a latest phenomenon and does absolutely represent a long-lasting historical background, which is also commonly mistaken by many people as identical to globalization. However, the term internationalization as described by Gerald Susman “is a process of increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets”. His stance gives a simple and comfortable epistemological foundation to discuss about the effects of internalization of education.  

The concept of internationalization has allowed many birds coming into the nests of European universities also permitting them to have wider choices in their educational preferences rather than just relying on their localized Educational standards. Commercial advantage, knowledge, language acquisition, and enhancing the curriculum with international content can be seen as the most-valuable reasoning that motivate internationalization in the sector of Education. These benefits should be considered as the optimistic effects of internationalization integrating the industrial standardization by also giving priorities to the individual identities.

An internationally standardized classroom and campus also would embark the facility for students to enjoy the concepts of ‘inter-culturalism and anti-bologna/anti-Europeanism’ in their learning process. This is the point where most students would feel un-comfortable with the different cultures and would start getting the sick of cultural shock. However, there would be also general understandings and misconceptions regarding some specific concerns in the beginning months of the university life, and this is an often-experienced issue in all internationalized industries giving great opportunities to view a concern from different cultural perspectives.    

A commonly reported issue with international students is the sky-scrapping tuition fees charged by the Universities, yet it can be profitable from the universities’ perspective and adds much psychological value to the qualification of students’. It also can be negatively affect the conformability of studying abroad paying attention to the cost of living and the political clamouring in finding part-time jobs and allocating working hours. However, scholarship programmes have won  more bargaining from the students who come from slum (poor) and dark (war-affected) hosts while also promoting the concept of ‘green’ for the universities and therefore increasing their sustainable awareness in different cultures.  

The greatest benefit of internationalization is the language English itself since most students especially from Asia  always have an option of studying English as their secondary language in their home countries and is can be seen as a very positive aspect of studying abroad where English is used for coaching. Meanwhile the drawbacks of preferring countries such as Netherlands, German and Russia should be also admired where the language of coordinating is strictly limited to their own. The major drawback of this system is that these languages can only be used in those nations and in outside, they all become useless. Therefore, getting an internationally recognized qualification denotes the ability of working in multi-national organizations where multi-culturalism is known to be the main asset.

Such an internalized educational opportunity gives an opportunity to involve and learn about the politics, social and the cultural life of the UK. In turn, this can provide an opening for the change of attitude towards learning and participating in the social and cultural life of their host countries while maintaining their ‘countries’ identity’ in order to be the most successful ‘global citizen’. Political revolutions and gender based equality awareness that happen all over the world especially in the Middle East can also be viewed as a positive effect caused by international Education and due to the common cultural understandings and adoptions caused.

Intellectuality and information are vital components of achieving this empowerment and integration. Because of the transnational nature of private universities, the internalized education can be a channel for the Sri Lankan community   to understand about the necessary political, social and cultural developments in the transnational spaces.  Moreover, internalised education provides avenues to balance the discrepancy that exists among a certain ethnic group.  For example, in terms of education there is a big gap between the Tamil Diaspora Community and Tamil people of Sri Lanka. In turn, such a discrepancy in quality education may tempt to create other discrepancies such as economical discrepancies.

The unseen or untouched part of internationalization of many scholars is ‘franchising’, which also remains as a flexible transfer of internationalized curricula in different countries with the institutions that have the ability of providing standardized education in the standardized quality. Franchising has turned to be one convenient way of expanding the borders of universities in different countries, allowing international students the option of getting internationally recognized qualification from their home country while admiring the criticisms of dumping the actual quality of qualification to some extent.

The best example would be Staffordshire University’s  franchising partner APIIT that provides the same qualification allowing students to study from Sri Lanka. It allows not only attracting the local (Sri Lankan) students to this programme but also attracting students from closed nations such as Maldives and India and the foreigners who live in Sri Lanka for commercial and professional purposes. Yet, it can be also viewed as a positive way of commercializing among the un-touched or un-attracted markets in the host countries where people are more backward to adapt different cultures. For an example, franchising would be the best choice in the Middle East. Offering online programmes also can be viewed in the same manner.

Make your comments below or send personal suggestions to nichecrunch@hotmail.com

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RR Donnelly in Sri Lanka; is it logical to expect an excellent (worst?)Working place as other multi-national firms` in Sri Lanka?

Yes, RR Donnelley a multinational company headquarted in Chicago currently hunts for people in Sri Lanka, which is one of the giants in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. It seems very often to notice their vacancy advertisements in Sri Lanka`s leading Newspapers and in the job brokering websites such topjobs.lk. The amazing fact is that they recruit the young minds of Sri Lanka just with three passes in A. Levels for specific positions, and the quantity needed to fill the space in their organization equals more than fifty for each position that they are hunting for. Preferred experience in the related field equals to 0 to one year, and it seems anyone with moderate level of qualification and experience can join with this global firm but is not necessarily a truth. The company owes different stages of process in its recruitment practice that stands for several interviews, exams, voice test, personality test, focus training and so on. The company executives claim that, they have innovated the recruitment process that no one has not yet even practised in the context of Sri Lanka, and the company`s logic behind recruitment denotes logical employees who have brains and not the fools with tons of qualifications. 

RR Donnelley Head office in the world trade center seems to be junked with the massive amount of crowed inside, one crew stands for the people who are already recruited by the company, and the rest stands for the people who are dying there to join with them. Most of the Sri Lankans prefer to work for multinational organizations just preferring their culture, flexibility, international working conditions, and narrower distance of hierarchy and for the other added working benefits. Who knows they might expect the same from RR Donnelly too, which seems not so logical after reading the employee reviews that claim this company as not a convenient place to work, and most of those reviews point-out the management as inefficient in all branches worldwide. A common complaint about this company is that employees are not treated well and even some employees find that their work life and personal life balance gets messed while admiring the high payouts.

However, regardless of whatever this company does practice in other countries, there is a common question that doubts on the excessive recruitment of the employees in Sri Lanka and India. The first concern here would be that RR Donnelly is a BPO company that needs enormous human capital as well IT resources. Countries such as India and Sri Lanka can be the HR farms where such companies may find highly IT erudite people at the lowest possible wages.  However, not all age groups are willing to fulfill this requirement and here is where they have targeted the right segments, youngsters after A. Levels who owe less or no experience, who are willing to flex their time whenever wanted even for seven days in a week if necessary, and who can commit themselves a bond for one or two years. I think RR Donnelley is doing well from the company`s point of view.

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What is it KFC has whether chickens or cruelty? Indian exposures against chicken cruelty 

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What is it KFC has whether chickens or cruelty? Indian exposures against chicken cruelty

 My vegetarian lips too recently said a ‘wow’ after reading in a website that KFC franchisers in India are getting more than one million loyal customers everyday and about the executives’ explicit goal of starting more 500 outlets in India by the year 2015. KFC’s damn success over McDonalds in India may be because of that KFC uses chickens and not beefs, or maybe Indians don’t like chickens so they eat them, or maybe they like cows so they don’t eat them ...:) My concern about the millions of millions of chickens that die each year only for these taste- hungering mouths made me to do a small research on the internet and consequently  my findings seem to be interesting to a great extent and sad too.

When Kentucky Fried Chicken became KFC in the year 1991, there were enormous rumors spreaded against to KFC. One of such big rumor was what someone claimed that what KFC used were not the real chickens and they were claimed to be Genetically manipulated Organisms (GMOs). According to those claims, those GMOs don’t have heads, features and foots, blood and other neutrinos were pumped to them using a tube, and they can’t eat or feel. However, KFC was successful in proving that it was a pure rumor. Later, KFC was great successful and slowly started to enlarge its network of franchises in different countries and it slowly moved into Sri Lanka and India as well. Anyhow, the beginning days of KFC’s survival in India was pretty much difficult since it started receiving industrial and legal pressures not just in India but also globally that even pushed some changes in its international standardization.

Top executives in KFC were quick to respond to these macro-environmental pressures in a brilliant way. They implemented a new system called ‘gassing the birds’ before killing them or before hanging them so that KFC claimed that chickens feel no pain when they are dying or feel comfortable even in the minutes before their demise. This strategic implementation was more than enough to convince the stakeholders of Animal rights. Of course, this was the point that the executives in KFC had too started realizing that ‘fully-standardization’ doesn’t work in every country and they started in believing in the aspects such as ‘localization, cultural integration and flexible transferring of policies’. KFC outlets in India started to add Butter, boxes of fried rice and even Vege-burger in their menus. KFC Sri Lanka added a specific item ‘Egg-Kottu and fried rice’ in its menu card. In other words, KFC has a clear goal in its business strategies and on making more out of business, but in humanity?

There has been a recent report that reveals how inhumanly KFC suppliers behave though KFC’s legal contract claims that they only consider specific suppliers who maintain an exact standard that respects Animal rights. Bearing it not as logic, a latest denoting of KFC can stand for Kentucky Fried Cruelly. An Environment Editor McCarthy’s article also claims against KFC’s inhumanity. As pointed out in the Animal Rights Report, KFC’s chicken suppliers behave cruelly with chickens, some of such behaviors include jumping up and down on the alive birds, throwing them like balloons and not giving them the priority to live according to the animal rights standards.   

In case of India, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) makes great exposures against KFC’s cruelty. From PETA, there have been several letters constantly written to the Indian KFC top executives, which request them to stop this cruelty right now. One such letter says ‘we cannot expect people to be vegetarians. But, at least we should allow these birds to live along with good living standards’. I think KFC should work hard to be Kentucky Fried Chicken and not to be Kentucky Fried Cruelly. 

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Small apparel factories in Asian countries do benchmark in their niche markets by promoting CSR initiatives

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) now has become a key to promote businesses, brands and even specific business units. CSR is one best way to show others that a company really cares about its society, environment, employees, and all other stakeholders. Why do most companies fail to gain their real outcomes that they ought to get from their CSR initiatives is because they downside to use it as a mean of promotion. Whether you are in a small business or engaged in large business, moral CSR would be the ultimate point where you can serve your business towards a successful sustainable survival.

Small apparel business firms in Asian countries do practice CSR as a very effective mean of promoting their business deals among their buyers or small niche markets. In countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and China, there are enormous amount of small apparel factories. However, it will not be sensible to say that they all factories play very successful in their businesses. Most of these export-oriented firms’ prime revenue sources are the countries in Europe, United States of America and other western countries who buy from them. Since these factories are small in scale, they mostly survive in their businesses with only one or two buyers who buy from them in a temporary basis. Nevertheless, there are also very successful small apparel firms with more than thousand employees and they earn a good income. Let us try to look-into further on why there is such a discrepancy. 

Noticeably successful firms are engaged in CSR activities and for sure, it remains as one of the main reasons for their sustainable survival. ‘CSR is one of the main reasons for why my buyers are insisting with my business and when a deal comes to end, my partners (buyers) always recommend other about my business’ said Mr. Bandula CEO of Rainbow Private Limited a medium size garment in Sri Lanka. Nevertheless, it is not to say that just actively participating and promoting CSR initiatives among your niche would only let your business to go up. Do not forget that CSR alone would never work unless if your business is up to the expected quality and customers’ requirements.  

There are some interesting stories on how small apparel factories in countries such as Sri Lanka, India, China and Thailand promote their CSR initiates among their niches (buyers). Milking scheme, vegetable scheme are two interesting ways how these firms do CSR with their employees and society. Most of these firms are situated in far villages and the people who live there are poor. Under milking scheme, the company will provide cows to some specific employees and all of the employees must take care of the cows. So that there is a basis and according to that basis, each employee must provide food to the cows and the milk will be equally distributed to the employees. Vegetable scheme also work in a similar manner.

It seems really funny as well interesting and these firms really being successful as they gain very loyal customers and a loyal niche market (buyers). Most of the buyers have started to prefer CSR in their choice of selecting suppliers as they a know a firm that takes care of employees and other stakeholders would take care of its buyers or customers as well.

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